Entities and attributes in science

Yes, they do. What does the light from a star tell you?
If it tells you anything. How does it do that?

 

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Yes. That doesn't make the fire/light itself information. Fire/Light is simply the medium. The on/off is the signal; that is the information.

One way of thinking of information is unpredictability. If you can predict what's coming, then there's no useful information in it.

"There is a fire over there." That is one bit of information. You will gain no more information unless the fire does something unexpected. Like get a blanket briefly thrown over it.

The fire/light is not information. The flicking of the light on and off, in a sequence that is not regular, is the information.

 

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James is right; you are confusing the map for the territory. The light of a star is not information. Certainly, there are properties we can tease out of the light that we can analyze, but the light is simply the medium that contains information.

 

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When the sun is in the sky overhead, that doesn't tell you it's daytime? The presence of sunlight isn't information? Moreover, the position of the light from the sun itself, doesn't inform you of anything?

 

Is the position in the sky of the light from a star, information?

What about sound? Sound isn't information either? But sound carries information?

In radio sending and receiving, there is a carrier frequency which is modulated. With no modulation you claim there is no information. But there is, it's the carrier wave, it is information because a radio receiver can still pick it up,
About now, I seriously would not consider anyone else who's posted in this thread a good candidate for a signals officer, in any kind of corps.
I'd say you would all fail the entrance test.

 

Another example. A military commander wants to deliver a dispatch to another base.
So he puts the paper dispatch in a satchel and orders one of his men to get the satchel to the other base, ASAP.

Is the dispatch information? Is the satchel information? What about the man carrying the satchel?
Would the enemy be interested in any of it? why, if the presence of the satchel and its carrier aren't information?

Can anyone explain this apparent contradiction?

 

It makes sense that, if you want to transmit a message you will need to store it and make sure the store isn't degraded. This is actually the classical problem with transmission, in that, the physical world can interfere with it.
You appear to be saying so far, that information requires a physical medium.

Regardless of whether I know or understand why I can read ordinary English words on a computer screen, I can still recognize English words. This is, as I have learned, because of how LEDs generate light. And because of digital logic.

Like a piece of paper I can write on, the important takeaway is, if I want to make patterns that are readable, recognizable English words there is a physical substrate that allows me this.

I'm not confused about what information is. It isn't some abstract mental thing. The world is full of information--classical information.
This isn't an idea. You need to process some of it in order to avoid danger; to decide what is and what isn't food; to function normally.

I don't think I'm the one making mistakes here.

 

Relevant to who or what? Who decides if the message even has any relevance?

You suggest there are other ways to get the message to the required destination. Then without explaining how or why, you say that means the information isn't in the satchel. But it is. The message with the information, is in the satchel. The commander has chosen how to send the message.
What logic are you using there?

How? The paper has a message written on it. A commander has decided to send this to another military base, so most likely believes the information in the message is relevant.

The man carrying the satchel, is something the enemy would see as valuable--information. It would be--relevant. The existence of a radio signal or its carrier frequency, is intel for the other side.

 

The characters written on the paper--the actual message--is a concept? Ink is a concept?

 

Ink is obviously not a concept. The meaning humans attach to patterns of ink on paper is a concept.

 

You mean, in much the same kind of way humans attach meaning to pretty much anything? Interference patterns? Cave paintings?
Forensic evidence of a crime?

People get life sentences for murder because some detectives had some concepts?
Especially the concepts they had about blood spatter, say.

 

Humans attach meaning to patterns. Yeah I can go with that.
I can't agree with James R's stance that information is a concept, however.
Since, in order to conceive the meaning of a message, you need the message.

Meaning is a concept. I guess. So if it is, then what is a concept? Is it a pattern too?
I mean it kind of makes sense that you recognize you have a concept.

 

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No of course not.

 

I don't understand what you mean.
No of course, humans attach meaning to patterns when they write them.
But they don't otherwise?

That blood spatter evidence isn't information, or not something we can attach meaning to?

 

I actually think that "ink" is very much a concept.
Sure, you can point to a bottle of it, but that is just an instance of the concept.
The concept of ink is the idea of something to colour a surface with (similar but different to paint).
When we call something physical "ink" we do so because we recognise it as fulfilling the concept of "ink" that we have.
If it didn't, we would call it by whatever concept we did recognise it to be, or say "I don't know what that is" etc.

Sure, we also call the physical object "ink" but that just means that this object fulfils the commonly held concept.

 

I'd also say that information is also very much a concept.
If you can recognise something as being one thing and not another, it is because you have a concept of those things against which to compare the observation.
You have an object in front of you that you recognise as a duck, and not as a car.
How can you do this?
It is because you have a concept of "duck" and "car" against which you're comparing it.
The duck you're actually observing is just a specific instance of the concept.

Similarly information can be recognised as such because it is the concept of that which is able to inform.
If it doesn't inform, if it doesn't add to the data you hold, or enable you to reason differently, then it is not recognised as information.
Again, this is because of the concept of what information is.

Some view concepts as being that which gives words the meaning we understand from them.
But maybe others have different views.

 

Here is some information:

1011011000100110010100010011

I can copy it. Except the copy will not be an exact copy (for reasons explained by quantum mechanics).
I can transmit it so it's received as is, over a reliable comms channel. I can store it. I can do all the things anyone can do with "digital information".

So far it means a string of 1s and 0s with a fixed length. A pattern can be seen; it isn't a regular pattern, more kind of random . . .

How many different "data objects" might it be? A number? A machine instruction? A secret message?
I need to know what context is required, to squeeze any more meaning out of the string.
Ergo meaning is context-dependent. Information by itself, isn't but it is physics-dependent in that a material substrate is required such that a pattern can be made.

p.s. modern physics theorists might point out that if information is a concept, not a real physical resource, then quantum entanglement is a concept too. This appears to be contradicted by reality.